A Plunge a Day Keeps the Devil at Bay

Philosophotography #3

---

---

An entire age seems to have come and gone since I last hiked down to Avent’s Creek, twenty minutes from my house. Last time I was here, it was the 1940’s or something like that, and Covid had just hit, and all the fish were swimming six feet apart from each other, and even the Northern Water Snakes were wearing masks, and I left feeling a bit depressed, thinking to myself, “What’s gone wrong in the world?” But this time was different. This time, the fish swam right up to me, even nibbled on my legs a little—which is just their fishy way of saying ‘hello’—and a pretty Northern Water Snake warmed herself contentedly by the water while I hopped around from boulder to boulder. On the outside, the sky was blue when I got here around 11:30 this morning and gray when I left around 1:30 pm. But on the inside, where it matters more, I came here under a gray sky and left under a blue one.

Here’s how it happened. I’d just finished writing the last sentence on a devotional from 1 Samuel 14, when all the clouds above my head, like little kids on a long car ride, suddenly decided they couldn’t hold it in any longer and just started grumbling. I had two immediate options: one, pack my bag quickly and rush back down the mile-long trail to my truck before the storm really gets going; or, two, place my camera on a boulder behind a log, hit record, and follow that inner nudge to jump in. Now, I admit that recording a rainy plunge for the purpose of writing a meditation like this feels a bit mercenary, but my motives weren’t entirely vain. See, this little rendezvous beckoned me because of a similar unrecorded experience I had about six years ago, on a day just like this, while I sat above the rushing, mountainous stream called Elk River, in Banner Elk, NC, writing a devotional on Luke. On that day, the sky suddenly turned black with storm clouds and had me sopping wet before I knew what hit me. But the surging showers filled me with a strange new confidence, or perhaps a dangerous carefreeness, and I hiked down into Elk River’s rushing waters and submerged myself all the way up to my head. The lightening did its devilish best to frighten me with thunderous threats, and the grumpy clouds pelted me with torrents of raindrops, as if I was being attacked by an old dragon spewing fiery breath, but none of it moved me. Not here. Not in these waters. Not when the presence of Almighty God and the awareness of the precious gift of life He’d imparted to me was permeating the atmosphere. I saw Elijah there too, hiding in the cleft of the boulder nearby, and we both listened intently through the rumblings and the rockings and the ragings of the devil the quiet whisper of our Creator, “Peace, be still.”

Even if there’s nothing particularly remarkable about a dip in a three-foot-deep kiddie pool on a rainy Friday, there’s still something to be said about the internal reward of following The Spirit through cold, uncomfortable waters when the other way is a whole lot easier.

---